Rockford high schools dropout factories’

A new study says Rockford’s Auburn, East and Jefferson high schools are “dropout factories” because few students who enroll there leave with a diploma.

Isaac Guerrero

A new study says Rockford’s Auburn, East and Jefferson high schools are “dropout factories” because few students who enroll there leave with a diploma.

The study prepared for The Associated Press by researchers at Johns Hopkins University identified 1,676 high schools nationwide that held on to 60 percent or less of their students from freshman to senior year — a rate that puts them in a category one researcher calls “dropout factories.” Overall, the schools on the list are in large cities or high-poverty rural areas, and they often have high minority populations.

Illinois had 55 high schools on the Hopkins list, or roughly 10 percent of the 582 high schools in the state. Of those 55 schools, 35 were in Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s third-largest district, and three were in Rockford School District 205.

The average retention rate — the number of freshmen who make it from freshman to senior year — is 53 percent at Jefferson High School, according to the study. Auburn and East share a more dismal 45 percent retention rate.

The district is trying to improve its high school graduation rates with programs focused on retaining freshman students that offer everything from smaller class sizes to tutoring and innovative extracurricular activities like ballroom dancing and martial arts.

“If you can get a child through their freshman year ... they have a much greater chance of graduating with their incoming class,” Assistant Superintendent Thomas Schmitt told the AP.

While the numbers are dramatic, researchers caution that they don’t necessarily tell the whole story. Raw enrollment figures for freshman classes can include both students entering high school for the first time and those repeating the ninth grade. Students required to repeat ninth grade can skew the numbers because almost all of them later drop out of school.

The numbers also don’t account for students who transferred high schools either inside or outside their districts and graduated elsewhere.

For students who drop out, academic performance plays a big role, but financial pressures can also force them out of the classroom and into the work force, particularly in low-income households.

“We have a 72 percent poverty rate in the district,” Schmitt said. “Some students are working to help their families, which is a very sad situation because then they’re hurting their own future. They’re filling a need right now.”

Rockford’s Wilson Middle School was transformed this summer into the Auburn High School Freshman Campus, creating 700 high school seats and easing overcrowding at all high schools. Other changes were made at East, Jefferson and Guilford high schools to make a more personal experience for this year’s freshman class.

“It’s too early to judge whether these Freshman Foundation initiatives are working,” said Rockford School Board member Mike Williams. “We’ve been talking for a long time about how horrific our dropout rate is, especially for African-American students. We’re going to have to do a lot more to make our schools more student-friendly.”

Staff writer Isaac Guerrero contributed to this report. Isaac Guerrero can be reached at 815-987-1371 or iguerrero@rrstar.com.

Local numbers

Johns Hopkins University researchers identified 55 Illinois schools as “dropout factories” because no more than 60 percent of the students who start as freshmen make it to their senior year. The percentages below reflect that retention rate:

In the Rockford School District, Auburn and East high schools had a dropout rate of 45 percent, while Jefferson’s dropout rate was 53 percent.